Thrill Kill, The 'Banned' Game Everyone Played

thegamer.com:

Once upon a time in a school playground in Glasgow, Scotland, a teenage boy received a CD-R in a clear jewel case and turned it in his hands with hushed reverence. The disc was blank except for two words scrawled in blue pen: Thrill Kill. This pirated PlayStation game was a coveted item in the school, its case scuffed and scratched from being tossed into countless school bags. Finally, after several long weeks of waiting, it was his turn.

That teenager was me, and I vividly remember the excitement of getting home that night and dropping the disc into my PlayStation. I had to use the infamous 'disc swap' technique to make it work, tricking the console into thinking the lid was shut with the inside of a ballpoint pen, then quickly swapping a legit game with the CD-R when the drive made a certain sound. That, or getting your PS 'chipped', was the only way to play Thrill Kill.

Related: Think You've Mastered Skyrim? Try Playing It As A Mudcrab

Thrill Kill was a fighting game developed exclusively for the PlayStation by Paradox Development. This LA-based studio (not to be confused with the Swedish Paradox behind the Crusader Kings series) existed from 1994 to 2008. In that time it launched a relatively small number of games, including X-Men: Mutant Academy and Backyard Wrestling. But it's the game it didn't launch that has come to define the developer's legacy.

Thrill Kill was cancelled in 1998, but somehow made it to playgrounds all over the UK—and almost certainly other countries too. When it was circulating in our school, no one knew where it originally came from. It's likely someone bought it from the Barras, a market where all manner of pirated games and software could be purchased in the late 1990s. Someone, somewhere,